Caravandroid - Now Available On Google Play!

[CartridgeCarnage]

Hello everyone - long time lurker, new poster here. I've always had a love for shoot em ups, and recently I've gotten irreversibly addicted to the Caravan shooters like Super Star Soldier, Soldier Blade, and Final Soldier, that have the 2 Minute and 5 Minute score attack modes. With my new found love for high score hunting and the pressure and excitement of time attack, I've taken the essence of this mode from the games mentioned above and turned them into a mobile game for Android devices.



The game controls pretty easily, you can swipe ANYWHERE and it will move your ship - this way you can keep your finger out of the way for those trickier segments. There are 8 different enemies, with different health, point values, movement patterns, and attack patterns, as well as 3 bosses that represent some of our favorite bosses from the Caravan games (RARIOS!) and they have ways of killing them to earn bonuses.



The famous "legos" are there for you to destroy for even more points, and of course the bonus orbs and upgrade orbs. I've had a blast developing this, and I've been playing it on my phone for the past half hour now and I really think that anyone who is a fan of the Caravan/Carnival series will really get a kick out of it.



I hope that those of you who play it enjoy it, and if you do, please let me know here, rate it on the Google Play store, and tell a friend! Thanks a ton everyone, I'm really looking forward to hearing your feedback.

Store Listing: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ryanbunting.Caravandroid
Price: $0.99

[buko-studios]

The pace of the game looks good in the video!
A nice use of the excellent graphics resource.

We'd love to know more about the development of the game.
Any plans for an iOS port?

[CartridgeCarnage]

Thank you very much! I started development 3 weeks ago using Game Maker Studio for it's handy-dandy android export. I kept music to a minimum to keep the filesize down as low as possible, but I had to include some because 1.) I love composing music for games, and 2.) It just wouldn't have that PC-Engine feel without some jamming tunes!

I first started with my own sprites, which were pretty solid, but I discovered that pack on OpenGameArt.org and just had to have them - they were a perfect fit for what I was trying to accomplish and I think really meshed well with the PC Engine aesthetic. The only modifications I made were scaling them up to give them an even more pixelated look.

I created all of the sounds, half of the sprites (the blocks, powerups, etc.) by hand, the tileset is actually intended for more of a Gauntlet style game but I repurposed them by recoloring and scaling them and they create the perfect look of a space installation.

The coding itself wasn't too difficult - I usually start by getting the engine completely done first, so I tackled that the first week. I first got player movement down, auto shooting, shot powerups, and the scoring system taken care of first. Then I moved onto the save system which just writes all relevant data to an .ini file for safe keeping. The only tricky part there was making sure that the game knew which stage and time limit you played on to ensure it wrote the scores to the write key, but that was a 20 minute endeavor since I had experience working with .ini's from my last Android project, ZooPop Deluxe.

I finished development today, and after playing it on my own phone for 45 minutes straight, I knew that I had to share it with the Shmups community!

My plan for iOS is this: If the Android port sells well enough (I'm looking for at least around 500-1000 copies sold) I'll put out the $100 for an iOS developer license (which is yearly) and the $300 for the iOS export package. Once I get that, it's just a matter of uploading the app package and the necessary media files for the store page and such and then I can release it for Apple devices.

If everything goes well on both fronts, I'm going to try and make a PC port with full support for XInput devices as well as a map editor and Steam Workshop integration so players can create their own stages and share them with friends. I'd like to get it onto both Steam and GOG.com if I decide to go forward with a PC port.

[buko-studios]

Sweeet! Lots of interesting Info's!
We'll be keeping an eye on this.
We gave you a shout out on our Shmuproom group on Deviant Art.

[CartridgeCarnage]

Thanks a ton for the support! I really appreciate it!